The king hoped that deputies chosen by his subjects would agree to raise the taxes to stave off bankruptcy. He summoned the Estates General, a long-forgotten elected assembly that had not been convened in 175 years. In 1789, French King Louis XVI, facing an unprecedented financial crisis, was compelled to raise taxes. When the French king tried to get the courts to authorize new taxes, law clerks roused urban populations to demonstrate against these violations of traditional rights. Ménétra and other artisans knew how to act together to pressure their employers for higher wages and to guard their jobs from outsiders who might undercut their wages. When flour prices soared, making bread too costly for poor families, crowds, often led by women, seized grain shipments and forced merchants to sell their goods at what the population considered a fair price. The memoirs of the French glassfitter Jacques Ménétra, one of the few working people of the time to keep a record of his life, recount many times when he and others joined together to confront the authorities. Most of them had enough to do just to make a living.Įven before 1789, however, ordinary people in France and other places knew that they did have some power if they acted together. The peasant farmers, artisans, and laborers who made up more than four-fifths of the population in France in 1789 mostly accepted the status quo, which seemed unalterable. To those in power, the lower classes were “the rabble,” “the mob,” an irrational force to be kept in awe by the police, the courts, and, if all else failed, by military force. The church, schools, and other authorities assumed that society could function only if common people left government to those who were chosen -by God or tradition-to direct it. Within a few years, however, the French Revolution would also show that crowds could be dangerous, even to governments that claimed to represent the will of the people.įor centuries, France, like almost all major countries of the world, had been governed by a hereditary monarchy. The storming of the Bastille set a precedent: For the first time in modern history, ordinary men and women, through their collective action in the streets, ensured the creation of a constitutional system of democratic government. That event marked the beginning of the French Revolution, a subject about which I have written and taught for more than four decades. ![]() Even as the drama unfolded, I couldn’t help recalling another moment when a crowd attacked an iconic public building: July 14, 1789, in Paris, France, when a crowd stormed the Bastille.
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